How much would you pay for…. me??? (Or Nick Hytner?)

It’s a frightening thought to have a monetary value ascribed to you, but as a freelance journalist, you are, of course, partly what you are paid (or sometimes, not), so I suppose my time is already quantified in that way. But last night the National Theatre held their now-annual FastForward fund-raiser at the Roundhouse, where guests were treated to a lavish seated banquet and onstage entertainment, plus a live and silent auction of what they called “once-in-a-lifetime experiences”, such as appearing onstage at the National… or attending a first night there in the company of a theatre critic, with dinner afterwards!

That was the auction lot I signed up to being sold off as, but was rather nervous: would anyone actually buy me? I mean, I don’t want you to think of me as a sad loser, but going to the theatre every single night of the week (and often weekends, too), you can sometimes run out of friends to take. And they go for free!

As I was busy last night – at the theatre, of course, going to see the transfer of Whipping It Up from the Bush to the New Ambassadors – I missed the dinner part of the proceedings, but arrived with my guest Andrzej for the second part of the evening, FastFoward Backstage, a party on the upper level of the Roundhouse designed to introduce younger people to the National. And there I discovered that I’d gone for £2,700! Which is great for the National’s fundraising efforts – but now puts me under a bit of pressure to deliver an experience that matches the price paid….

I regularly already host events on behalf of the National’s corporate/development department, whose subscribers and donors are treated to post-show talks with members of the cast or creative team of the show they’ve just seen, and which I facilitate. (Just last week I did one after a performance of The Reporter with Richard Eyre, back at the National that he of course used to run, for the theatre’s American sponsors…. but Richard was so schooled at such events that he started without me!)

What goes on inside a theatre isn’t, of course, confined to what happens on a stage, or for the audience who pays to see it done there; but it’s fascinating to see this new part of the ecology of theatrical fundraising in action. Most American regional “institutional” or “not-for-profit” theatres run to this model already, since state subsidy is in short supply; but the National – already our most robustly funded state theatre – now has a finely-honed machinery for earning its own sponsorship income. And they’re very good on offering the “added value” that makes it worthwhile for sponsors to value the add-ons they’re getting. I just hope I now live up to expectation….!

Mind you, the high price needs to be put in perspective, and I’ve just read in today’s Londoners’ Diary in the Standard that the highest bid went for lunch at Sheekey’s with Nick Hytner and Helen Mirren, and was bought for £40,000 by Lloyd Dorfman, CEO of Travelex — the sponsors of the NT’s revolutionary £10 season that has been the biggest innovation (and success) of Hytner’s regime. I think Hytner should be taking him to lunch for free, myself…!